By: BabyRuth –
Happy 2021 Boozers! We made it through what will hopefully be the worst year of our lives. While there’s hope on the horizon, things are pretty much the same with many of us still looking for things to keep us entertained while staying home and staying safe. So, here’s a new batch of crap for you to explore- some good, some not-so-good, and a couple recent finds so wonderful you will thank me (just remember, you heard it here first!).
Fight of Fury (2020)
Good, even great, movies come along pretty frequently. I mean, the Academy Awards had to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten back in 2009. Less often though, we are blessed with the true gems. The rarest of the rare. The magnificent bizarre standouts of outsider cinema.
I am happy to report that I have discovered the latest addition to this list.
It’s called Fight of Fury and stars martial arts grandmaster Shuny Bee (also the writer and director) as Brandon (one of many nods to Bee’s hero Bruce Lee, to whom he also dedicates the film), a dojo-owner, widowed single father, and all-around perfect human being. He meets a runaway victim of human-trafficking and sets out to get revenge on the ring of cocaine-snorting bad guys.
This one checks all the boxes:
Vanity project- check
Insane editing and ADR- check
Confusing timeline – check
Makeshift sets – check
Over-the-top acting – check (Special shout-outs to “Nicki” and “Karen’s dad”)
This film primarily serves as a showcase for Bee’s skills – watch in awe as he takes down the no-good thugs one by one in extravagantly choreographed and frantically edited fight scenes! But he shows off some acting chops as well, often reciting paragraphs of his wisdom while shedding a single tear.
I am amazed that this film has been out (for FREE) on Prime for several months and nobody is talking about it. This is, without a shred of a sliver of an atom of doubt, the next addition in the top tier of the so bad it’s awesome hierarchy. The best way I can describe it would be Miami Connection meets The Room with some Breen-esque villains, and it holds its own against all of those movies. I feel spiritually compelled to spread the word to fellow lovers of self-indulgent auteur cinema. STOP SLEEPING ON FIGHT OF FURY! You will thank me, I promise.
And great news: Shuny Bee is already hard at work filming Fight of Fury 2!
Six-Pack in the very best way
Mini-Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: when the ADR doesn’t match up
Take a Drink: when the set is obviously Bee’s dojo in disguise
Take a Drink: every time you see something that has Bee’s real name on it, despite his character being named Brandon (look at his office and jacket closely)
Take a Drink: for every out of nowhere random scene or character (examples: the singing little boy, the gigantic dog we see once, the school guidance counselor)
Take a Drink: whenever the daughter appears to be laughing/smiling through a dramatic scene
Chug: during the Baskin Robbins scene (the spiritual sequel to the flower shop scene in The Room and my favorite part of this whole movie)
Chug: while keeping an eye on the never-ending line of extras in the background during Brandon’s tragic story about what happened to his wife
Do a Shot: at the ending (Shuny knows it’s always best to leave them wanting more)
Beyond the Seventh Door (1987)
Like, Fight of Fury, this one’s been hiding in plain sight on Prime Video for quite some time with little to no fanfare. I recently became aware of it and it is such a gem that it may just dethrone Ryan’s Babe as Canada’s answer to The Room. Speaking of, it’s impossible not to notice the physical similarity between Wiseau and Beyond’s leading man Lazar Rockwood (let’s just take a moment and bask in that name: LAZAR ROCKWOOD), both in looks and performance style. It truly is something to behold.
Think Saw or Cube, but on a budget of about $200. (It should be mentioned that this film was released before both of those as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which has a verrry similar scene. Now, I’m not accusing those larger films of idea-stealing, but…) That is the movie, but it is strangely compelling and has that earnest quality that is ever so important. You can tell everyone involved is trying very hard to make an exciting thriller. Even Rockwood in his own way. And his own way is coming across as if he is making the least effort possible. It’s hard to explain, you really need to see it to understand what I mean.
It’s a quick watch, never lags, and actually has a pretty clever final twist.
Another well-earned Six Pack
Mini-Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever Rockwood lights up a cigarette (I need to rewatch this and Elves to determine the winner of Most Cigarettes Smoked by One Character in a Movie of all time.)
Take a Drink: whenever the two main characters insult each other
Take a Drink: every time Wendy figures out the impossible answer to a puzzle
Take Drink: when you can see a “corpse” breathing
Chug: during the love scene (you’re gonna need it)
Do a Shot: “The holes! Tell me about the holes!”
A Karate Christmas Miracle (2019)
Whew boy… Okay, now we get into the truly head-spinning portion of our Six Pack of Crap.
I started to see this film mentioned over the holidays on Bad Film Twitter and it looked innocent enough: some silly low-budget, but well-meaning family holiday film.
Then I looked it up on IMDB and the description read: After his father disappeared during a mass shooting on Christmas Day the year before, precocious 10-year-old Jesse Genesis creates a “12 Days of Christmas List” of tasks. He believes that If he completes them all, including becoming a self-taught karate black belt, his father will return on Christmas Day. Jesse’s sophisticated, workaholic mother Abby believes that her husband died in the shooting but visions that Jesse reports to her give her a glimmer of hope. After Abby enlists the aid of an eccentric psychic-turned-law professor, a rollercoaster thriller ensues and the trio unravels an unexpected mystery–and maybe, just maybe, will witness the delivery of a miracle that can only happen on Christmas.
Even with going into this film with this knowledge, I was not prepared for the fever dream that followed. It’s insane. Not insane like “yo, this is cr-azy!” but insane like the person who wrote and produced this must not be right in the head.
Guess what? The writer/producer/co-star/father of the lead child actor is a certified nutcase! I’ll let you go down that rabbithole yourselves. Just search “Ken Del Vecchio” and don’t say I didn’t warn you (he has his own “news site” which includes reviews written by ‘staff’ of his films as well as his own film festival; he has also run for Congress and was a municipal judge – I know…). He’s basically David DeCouteau crossed with Alex Jones.
Like DeCouteau, Del Vecchio makes many, many films and has a group of B-C list actors that make repeat appearances in them including Eric Roberts (has this guy ever said no to any movie?), Julie McCullough (aka the actress that played Kirk Cameron’s girlfriend on Growing Pains until Cameron got her fired after she posed for Playboy), and Martin Kove, who maybe now with the success of Cobra Kai (don’t even talk to me if you STILL have not checked it out) won’t have to appear in any more of these movies. All three technically star in A Karate Christmas Miracle. I say technically because Roberts’ and Kove’s scenes are actually from another Del Vecchio film called Joker’s Wild (also known as Joker’s Poltergeist) and spliced into the “plot” of A Karate Christmas Miracle. Joker’s Wild/Poltergeist (which I haven’t yet subjected myself to) is about a mass shooting in a theater and has a character named Aurora. There are also maniacal clowns. How does this fit into a family holiday film about karate? It doesn’t. I’m guessing since Del Vecchio had footage of Martin Kove and this movie is about karate (it’s really not, but just go with it) that he felt the need to shoehorn him in somehow.
Anyway, it’s bizarre and awful and you need to watch it right away.
Six Pack
Mini-Drinking Game:
Take a drink: whenever a character does (go easy)
Take a drink: when there is any actual karate
Take a drink: when the very dark and jarring Joker’s Wild footage comes out of nowhere
Take a drink: for every genius marketing pitch the mother comes up with (“Applesauce is the new JELLO!”)
Do a shot and the another if needed: at the last scene
A Wrestling Christmas Miracle (2020)
Yup, there is a follow-up to A Karate Christmas Miracle. But though it has much of the same cast, this is not a sequel. Once again, the young Del Vecchio child has a task at hand. This time, despite being a renowned wrestling and football star (cue long prologue of home movies, complete with blurred out faces) he must film a movie and play it for his comatose friend in hopes that it will magically wake him. But the bumbling stars of the movie within the movie (McCullough is really going for it, and I respect that) steal the sole hard drive of the film while the father is off overthrowing a communist dictator in the Congo under the guise of a wrestling tournament and Jesus Christ, I don’t care anymore. We don’t get Eric Roberts this time around, but Gilbert Gottfried and Todd Bridges show up. I’m guessing the kid’s movie is once again footage from another Del Vecchio production.
If you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, you know that nothing fascinates me more than these auteurs who feel so inclined to follow through on their visions or possibly use these “films” as money laundering schemes (speaking of, this one claims to have a budget of two million dollars). That’s all, just felt the need to explain myself.
Six Pack
Mini-Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: every time someone mentions how talented the kid is
Take a Drink: every time someone mentions how talented the father is
Take a Drink: whenever someone says “Congo”
Do a Shot: whenever Kitty Kat says something stupid
Point Doom (2000)
You know it’s a special movie when the music gets billing over the actors on the DVD cover.
How in the hell was I not aware of this circa 2000 gem starring Richard Grieco, Andrew Dice Clay, Angie Everhart, Ice-T, Zach Galligan, and Sebastian Bach? My god, now that’s a cast! Grieco plays our hero Rick Hansen, a wealthy talent agent with a heart of gold and a head full of hair gel who is just looking for his one true soulmate, in a strip club. He meets cocktail waitress Stephanie (Jennifer O’Dell) and it’s love at first sight, but ut oh, she already has a boyfriend Blackie (John Enos III) and he’s bad news. He’s part of a motorcycle gang named Satan’s Slaves and abusive toward Stephanie and her epileptic sister (Everhart). Things intensify when Stephanie attempts to leave him once and for all, accidentally taking an important bag that Blackie asked Stephanie to hang on to.
This is one of those movies that can only have come to exist at a very particular point in time. This one being on the brink of the millennium, where everyone dressed like they were in A Night at the Roxbury (aka The Greatest Movie of All Time, which coincidentally also stars Grieco). They were really going for a gritty and violent crime film – it’s got plenty of shootouts, boobies, and f-bombs, but it’s gloriously clunky and silly. I had a lot of fun with this one and recommend it completely.
Six Pack
Mini-Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: BOOBIES!
Take a Drink: whenever THE BAG is mentioned or seen
Take a Drink: Sebastian Bach!
Take a Drink: whenever Angie Everhart’s character has an epileptic episode
Take a Drink: for every impossibly stupid decision a character makes (Examples: Staying behind in a house where you know the bad guys will come back to; Taking a nap the night of the big show-down.)
Do a Shot: for every explosion
Grizzly II: Revenge (1983)
Also known as Grizzly II: The Concert, this sequel to 1976’a creature feature Grizzly had become somewhat of an elusive legend. The long-abandoned film sat unfinished (due to the funding running out) for nearly forty years. After a workprint leaked a few years ago and gained somewhat of a buzz among cult movie fans due to very early appearances of George Clooney, Laura Dern, and Charlie Sheen, original producer Suzanne C. Nagy obtained the legal rights to complete and release the film.
Sounds cool, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought. So I coughed up $3.99 to rent it, excited to settle in for a dose of cheesy bad goodness.
Despite being top-billed, baby Clooney, Dern, and Sheen (ages 22, 16, and 18 respectively), all get ripped apart (offscreen) by angry mama Grizzly in the opening scene that lasts roughly five minutes. The remainder of the film is toggles back and forth between a ranger (Steve Inwood), the “Director of Bear Management” (Deborah Raffin), and a trapper named Bouchard (John Rhys-Davis) trying to track down the revenge-fueled bear at a music festival (hence, “The Concert”) taking place in the park despite the threat. Other notable stars include Louise Fletcher as the villainous greedy mayor and Deborah Foreman as the festival-working daughter of the ranger.
The concert footage was taken from an actual music festival in Hungary (though the film is set in the United States). Well, most of it that is. Apparently they needed more footage to fill out of the run-time (despite roughly half the movie being comprised of overlong and horrible new-wave bands’ performances), so what to do? Oh, just film some additional footage of audience members and even yet another band and splice it in awkwardly (everything from modern day clothing and hair to the film/video quality to the hilarious attempt at making someone’s backyard look like a large stage clashes).
You’d expect a killer Grizzly bear rampaging through a forest where there is a huge concert taking place to culminate in a bloody climax with dozens of dumb kids (and hopefully all the bands) getting torn apart, right? Well, that doesn’t happen.
This was a disappointment and a slog to get through. If you’re really curious, then go for it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Five Beers
Mini-Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever someone is killed (offscreen)
Take a Drink: every time Bouchard refers to himself in the third person
Take a Drink: whenever blatantly obvious recently-filmed footage is mixed in
Take a Drink: when the nature shots are reused
Chug (as needed): through Every. Single. Boring. Musical performance
Do a Shot: when the mechanical bear is finally shown
Until we meet again, this has been your friendly movie masochist BabyRuth. If it’s shit, I’ll watch it!™
